The project's high-need southeast Wyoming districts serve a largely rural and growing migrant population in a geographic area of more than 16,000 square miles, so one goal is to define a professional development model that meets the needs of rural schools. Activities will include two 4-week instructional modules and two document-based question workshops during the school year; in the summer, teachers will be involved in a 10-day field excursion and a 1-week curriculum workshop, during which they will develop lesson plans. Teachers can participate in a single year of the program, then choose to continue for an additional year or two; the cadre will include approximately 40 teachers each year, some new and some continuing. As they learn to think like historians, teachers will study decisions and actions of specific people—government and military leaders, soldiers, tribal leaders, businessmen and everyday citizens—whose choices changed the outcome of history. Strategies will include historical inquiry skills, with a significant focus on document-based questioning, and strategies to help students develop critical reading, thinking and writing skills. The Center for History and New Media will lead training on teaching history in the digital age, introducing digital research libraries and multimedia technologies. Graduate credits will be available for completion of certain activities. Teams of teachers will collaborate to produce and implement classroom curricula; these and other materials (e.g., hands-on simulations, games, how-to seminars, distance learning materials) will be available to other teachers through a Web site and participant-led peer workshops.

Two of these southern Washington state districts collaborated on a previous Teaching American History grant; it was so successful that teachers on a waiting list made it clear that extending the project—and involving another district—would have value. Each year, teachers will attend seven full-day symposia of scholarly lectures and lesson modeling. In monthly study groups, teachers from all three districts will work as a learning community to solve problems, reflect on practice and conduct lesson study. During a 5-day summer field study, teachers will work directly with historians, archivists and curators at local and regional sites. Five 1-year cohorts of 25 teachers will participate; teachers will be those who need to reach highly qualified status or who come from the lowest performing schools. The project theme of "Towards a More Perfect Union" will guide the exploration of civil rights throughout U.S. history. The Concerns-Based Adoption Model will be the overarching framework for more than 100 hours of annual professional development. Led by expert historians and master history educators, teachers will learn History Habits of Mind and study traditional American history by addressing essential questions about the ideals of democracy, liberty and equality. To promote a culture of instructional excellence and collegiality, project staff will introduce professional learning communities, lesson study and one-on-one mentoring/coaching by teachers who participated in the previous grant. All state teachers will have access to project-created products, including standards-based lesson plans and assessments, activities based on historical texts, in-service units for future use, and classroom kits that incorporate history and archeology for hands-on experiences.

These contiguous Vermont districts are overwhelmingly rural, and some have above-average poverty rates. The project will organize its teaching fellows into four regional learning communities to help combat the rural isolation factor. Each learning community will have an experienced teacher who provides leadership and support. Teachers will discuss books, engage in primary source activities and look at student work. Fellows will be able to choose from additional activities that include providing professional development in their own or nearby districts, presenting at conferences, and publishing in the Flow of History newsletter. Summer institutes will begin in Year 2 and carry into the school year; teachers will select topics and begin historical inquiry during the institute, then continue the work with students in the classroom, thus working toward the project aim of building historical thinking skills. Each year, fellows will create portfolios of primary sources, activities and student work keyed to the historical content, historical thinking strategies and inquiry techniques discussed during the year. As teachers learn about major themes, issues and events in American history, they will learn to scaffold historical thinking skills that build from basic observation to more sophisticated forms of analysis and interpretation, culminating in conducting inquiry-based research. Staff from partner organizations, regional museums and historic sites will provide content information for workshops and field studies. Project activities will help teachers earn continuing education and graduate credits. The project's advisory board will use a rubric to review materials produced by teachers, and completed materials will be available online through Web sites managed by two project partners.

Turning Points in American History will serve 70 public schools and 27 independent schools in rural northwestern Vermont; based on a survey, many of the teachers in these schools have a limited knowledge of American history. This professional development program will provide opportunities for long-term partnerships with local and regional historical organizations by centering activities around local museums. Events will include (1) three scholar-led seminars per year to build teachers' content knowledge and chronological-thinking skills; (2) book and primary source study groups, which will focus on one historical era per year; (3) summer field studies at national sites and local historic sites and museums; and (4) teacher leadership institutes, which will encourage teachers to discuss content and pedagogy through shared experiences and the new digital classroom. This model will (1) create inquiry-based study groups for teaching content and historical thinking, (2) add existing knowledge for best practice for creating digital learning communities, (3) produce new lessons around teaching with historical sites, (4) institute new policies around peer-to-peer professional development, and (5) build strong school-museum partnerships. The teachers will pre-read historical materials and attend lectures followed by small-group discussions with the scholars, learn to analyze and interpret primary sources and develop writing assignments to exhibit historical-thinking skills, and post their interpretations to a digital classroom for peer feedback. The project will create a Web site that features exemplary activities, lectures and other resources created by the project; in addition, it will produce new curriculum resources, including lessons, units, streaming video of study groups, historical writing assignments and benchmarks.

Many students in this Utah district come from multigenerational, low-income families in rural communities spread across a large geographic area, including an American Indian reservation. Each year, project teachers will participate in monthly symposia, featuring lectures and reading assignments that examine key concepts, issues, questions and primary sources; monthly lesson study groups, focusing on pedagogy, research, assessment development, presentations and the historical investigation process; and studies of online collections and on-site field research at local sites. Four teachers also will attend the annual conference for the National Council for the Social Studies. In Years 3 and 5, all teachers will participate in a 5-day regional capstone field study. Annually, the project will serve 20 history teachers (half elementary and half secondary), each of whom may participate for up to three years. In addition, the history lectures and instructional resources will be open to all district teachers. The project's themes will be based on common threads across the Utah History Core and an assessment of teachers' needs. The strategies will include using expert historians and master history educators, embedding impactful pedagogical methods, and using local and national resources. The trainings will be supplemented with effective strategies that entwine continuous learning into teachers' daily routines, including professional learning communities, lesson study, one-on-one mentoring/coaching and virtual networks. Teachers also will have an opportunity to earn professional and master's degree credits. The teachers will create high-quality products, including standards-based curriculum units, mini-research projects involving primary sources and benchmarks, and common assessments for the new Utah History Standards.

Schools in this district serve students from some of Utah's most disadvantaged communities. More than 40 percent of the students are minorities, and 24 percent are considered limited English proficient. This project will build on the success and momentum of an existing Teaching American History grant. Each year, the project will include a 2-week teacher academy, which features content taught by historical experts, the modeling of best practices in instructional methodology, and hands-on research and group work; quarterly school-year workshops to ensure that participating teachers know the Utah History Core, can assess student learning and can modify their instruction to meet student needs; and quarterly collaborative study groups to help teachers identify needs, brainstorm and prioritize appropriate solutions, and implement those solutions. To address the needs of its diverse population, the project will extend professional development to 40 teachers per year; based on their needs and performances, teachers may participate for up to three years. The highest selection priority will be given to teachers who are not highly qualified, have taken few academic history courses and/or have not recently attended history-related trainings. The content will explore questions and enduring understandings of traditional American history that transcend all time periods, focusing on pivotal issues, events, turning points, documents, legislation and judicial cases. The project will integrate cross-curricular and life-skills strategies, engage teachers in lesson study and develop peer mentors/coaches. Participants will create high-quality resources, including primary source kits, integrated language arts lessons, history unit plans and in-service units, and comprehensive elementary history curriculum maps and benchmarks.

In this high-poverty area of southeastern Tennessee, approximately one-third of all high school students fail to attain proficiency in American history, and their teachers have no history professional development program. All participating teachers will receive at least 280 hours of professional development, with high implementation (HI) teachers receiving about 400 additional hours during three years of colloquia and practicums as well as several summer study trips. Of the 90 teachers involved, 20 will be designated as HI teachers; they will receive in-depth training, including Web-based courses, to become history leaders for the district. Another 20 partner teachers will participate in professional development and be mentored by HI teachers. The remaining 50 consortium teachers will receive professional development. The project's underlying theme is making connections—teachers will connect to one another, to professional historians and to historic sites and events, thus bringing heightened levels of knowledge and enthusiasm to their teaching. All professional development sessions will deliver content related to the topic for the year, with the goal of helping teachers learn to practice history as historians do; readings will be a mix of factual and fictional, selected to provide insights, perspectives and teaching tools. Instructional strategies will include using historical habits of mind, primary sources, backward mapping, authentic assessment, content-area reading, research and interpretation. Project-generated best practices, evaluation tools and lessons will be reviewed by history professors and state history specialists, then posted on three Web sites, including the Gilder Lehrman site, and promoted at professional conferences.